Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador slammed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for signing a law that allows peace officers to arrest people they think entered the country illegally, accusing him of just wanting to be the Republican nominee for vice president.
López Obrador, often referred to as AMLO, dispensed the harsh criticism of Abbott at a news conference on Tuesday. He also lectured him on history.
“He wants to be the Republican Party’s vice presidential candidate. In the United States he wants to gain popularity with these measures,” López Obrador said after he was asked about the new Texas law. Abbott signed the law on Monday.
“You are not going to win anything,” he warned Abbott. “On the contrary, he will lose sympathy because in Texas there are many Mexicans, many migrants. He forgets that Texas was from Mexico, like 10 states of the American Union.”
López Obrador vowed to defend “our countrymen and migrants” and said Mexico already has a challenge to the law under way.
The new law makes illegally entering the country a state crime, a misdemeanor. A peace officer, which is broadly defined and can include such people as local police officers and security officers of the state medical board, can inquire about a person’s citizenship and immigrant status if they think they have entered the U.S. illegally. If so, a magistrate can order them out of the country.
López Obrador said that Abbott has forgotten that the U.S. was “consolidated and strengthened” thanks to migrants of the world. He also admonished Abbott on religious grounds.
“He forgets that in the Bible it says that you should not treat strangers badly … This man knows what he has done,” he said.
He added more criticism, chastising Abbott for busing immigrants to New York, Chicago and the residence of Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington, D.C., in winter and without coordinating with the cities that have been accommodating of the immigrants, many of whom have pending…
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